


pas pour deux sans toi

by Wordsintothevoid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Angst, Autistic Castiel (Supernatural), Ballet Dancer Castiel (Supernatural), Ballet Dancer Dean Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Castiel/Dean Winchester Mutual Pining, Dean Winchester Has ADHD, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Gay Castiel (Supernatural), Homophobic John Winchester, Internalized Homophobia, John Winchester Being an Asshole, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Castiel (Supernatural), POV Dean Winchester, Rating May Change, Rivals to Friends to Lovers, Rivals to Lovers, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28446279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordsintothevoid/pseuds/Wordsintothevoid
Summary: Castiel Novak is a student at the School of American Ballet, desperate to be offered a professional position with the New York City Ballet. Dean Winchester is a ballet dancer in Lawrence, Kansas, struggling to take care of his brother Sam while he works to compete in the Youth America Grand Prix.When they're hired at NYCB, sparks fly on and off stage, but Dean isn't interested in men and Castiel isn't interested in someone as arrogant and obnoxious as Dean. But a pas de deux can't be danced alone and they have a lot to learn about themselves and each other.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	pas pour deux sans toi

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! My name's Ryn and I'm SO insanely excited to start on this fic journey. This has been so amazing to work on this with my dear friend and beta Grassie and you should definitely check out their blog [thegrassfairy](https://thegrassfairy.tumblr.com/%22). If you'd like to follow this fic, I'll be posting updates and writerly rambling on my tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/deancas-stan/search/pas+pour+deux+sans+toi%22).
> 
> This fic will be dealing with Dean and Cas's neurodivergence and internalized homophobia, criticism of ballet culture (racism, fatphobia, and queerphobia), and the intense pressure to succeed. I've danced for several years and have done lots of research into this topic so I'll be doing my best to do justice to this concept and to Dean and Cas. Please let me know if I accidently say something insensitive or if you'd like a particular trigger to be tagged.
> 
> Currently, I don't have a regular posting schedule since I'll be going to college soon and I have no idea how intense my classes will be. Updates might be slow but I promise I love this fic and I won't abandon it!

Castiel Novak falls out of a pirouette for the third time that day. He clenches his jaw and resets, pliéing into fourth position and choosing his spot. He snaps his foot to passé and keeps his abs tight as he spins, focusing on his own eyes in the mirror in front of him. He turns á la seconde, desperately trying to keep his leg from overbalancing him.

He stumbles and manages to end up on the floor. He jumps up, cheeks burning.

Hester cuts the music and the other dancers pause, looking around for the weak link. “Novak,” she calls and Castiel feels his shoulders tense in anticipation. “Get it together. I’ve seen better turns out of you.”

He nods brusquely and settles back into the opening position for the combination. His legs are burning but he can’t stop, not after falling. There’s no excuse for a bad turning day. It just means that he needs to work harder.

He pushes through pirouettes and onto grande allegro. Hester demonstrates the men’s combo and he marks it carefully, memorizing the intricate steps. Tour jeté, chassé, tombé, pas de bourrée, and finishing in a double pirouette en dehors de l'attitude derrière. 

His tour jeté is skyhigh, his extension perfect, and he’s perfectly in time with the music. Until he gets to the pirouette. His leg doesn’t come up high enough and he doesn’t have enough momentum to complete the double turn. He stumbles out of the turn looking foolish while to his right, Balthazar finishes in a perfect fifth position.

Castiel tells himself that he will not cry, even as hot pinpricks sting his eyes. He is sixteen years old. He will not cry in the middle of a fucking ballet class.

He shuffles over to the side as the next group prepares to run the combination. Standing there, he stretches his calves and does a few quick pliés to relieve the ache in his arches. Hester’s eyes feel like a burn against his skin and he keeps his head down, avoiding eye contact as he rolls out the kinks in his neck.

The next group does well and no one falls or stumbles out of _their_ pirouette. _Stop it_ , he tells himself firmly. Dwelling on it will only serve to worsen his dancing.

The rest of the class passes fairly quickly and Castiel focuses on doing his absolute best and giving his all in every combination, desperate to avoid any further mistakes.

After the révérance, Castiel slips off his ballet shoes and tucks them away in his dance bag, taking a long sip of water. Hester approaches, her neat blonde bun starting to fray apart after hours of dancing. “Castiel, I know you can do better. I’ve _seen_ you whip out triple pirouettes. What’s going on?”

He shrugs, shoulders feeling like lead. “I’m not sure. I’ll do better, I swear it.”

She searches his eyes, eyes slightly skeptical. “I’d like to see it. You have potential, Castiel. Don’t throw it away because you got distracted.”

He nods and she walks away to prepare for the next class. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he pulls on sneakers and heads to his dorm room. The hallways are crowded as classes let out and he dodges the crowd, finally arriving at his room and letting himself in with the key he keeps on a lanyard.

Balthazar is already lounging on his bed, munching on a bag of chips as he flips through a chemistry textbook. “Bad turn day, Cassie. Going to have to do better or old Hest will have your ass.”

Castiel reminds himself that he doesn’t want to get expelled for punching someone. He nods stiffly and strips off his shirt to change into clean clothes. Balthazar whistles appreciatively but Castiel ignores him.

He slips on a fresh t-shirt and his softest pair of well-worn jeans that he bought at Goodwill. Being a scholarship student means he has to scrimp for every expense. It’s exhausting, especially when he has days like today when the bone-deep terror of being cut from the program settles in around his ribs and leaves him stumbling out of every step.

He can’t lose his spot at School of American Ballet. They turn out more professional dancers than any other school and he worked his ass off since he was six years old so he could audition in eighth grade. His mother hadn’t cried as they boxed up his clothes and school supplies to make the drive to New York. She had just nodded at him in the mirror as his father drove and said, “Don’t throw away your potential, Castiel. We expect you to make this worth our while.”

He’d been tempted to ask what they were contributing— he’d managed to earn a full ride scholarship— but he’d kept his mouth shut. He’d learned that arguing with Naomi never helped. She’d made it clear early on that they would pay for his training until he got in and then he was not to expect another dime. 

“You’ve always been independent, Castiel. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a self-made man?” Zachariah had drawled and Castiel at age thirteen thought about punching his father and forced himself to turn away.

If he gets cut from the program, there will be no more ballet.

Castiel sinks onto his bed and pulls out an algebra textbook and his headphones. He has a test on Thursday and he can’t afford to fail that, either.

Castiel’s alarm blares at six am. He cracks open an eye blearily, to see Balthazar doing shirtless pushups on the floor between their beds. He bites his lip and wills his dick not to act up. There’s a _long_ list of reasons he can’t get involved with Balthazar and at the top of the list is that he can’t afford to get distracted.

He’s seen it before, girls getting involved with some guy that they tend to get paired with for pas de deux and then both of them start skipping class to spend more time together or pretending to study after hours and getting caught making out instead. That’s fine until their dancing falls behind and the next year, you don’t see them back again and no one says their names anymore except in whispers after classes.

_“Yasmeen and Diego. Yeah, it’s rough. Should have been more careful.”_

Castiel will never allow himself to sacrifice his career just for the sake of love. Love is better in the ballets, the ones where nothing can ever come between lovers. Not fate, not gods and goddesses, not even death. Romeo and Juliet, Giselle and Albrecht, Odette and Siegfried. Together forever.

He sighs and drags his ass out of bed to touch his toes, leaning forward until his clasped elbows brush against the cold wood floor and feeling his hamstrings groan in protest. Splits are a “use it or lose it” type of thing and a dancer who isn’t flexible will struggle in class. 

“Cassie, do you ever think about putting that flexibility to good use one of these days?” Balthazar asks as he lies on the ground, cheeks pink with exertion.

“Fuck off.” Castiel grabs his right heel and lifts his leg high over his head, tilting until his hip pops. “You know you’re not my type.”

“But darling, how will you know if you’ve never tried? The girls around here think that you’re secretly a sexless android.” Balthazar slides seamlessly into his middle splits, grinning up at him from the floor.

“As long as I can dance better than any of them, I don’t care if they think I’m the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.” Castiel lifts his other leg into a stretch above his head.

“A pop culture reference? From you?” Balthazar places a hand over his chest as he rolls out the kinks in his neck.

“God, don’t alert the media. My older brother Gabriel made me watch Ghostbusters even though Anna said it was asinine.”

“So maybe not an android after all. Hmm, so you’re saying I still have a chance,” Balthazar muses.

Castiel grabs a pillow from his bed and whips at Balthazar who catches it effortlessly. “Anytime you want, Cassie! Anytime at all!”

Castiel sighs in disgust and throws on a pair of sweats and a black t-shirt. Balthazar has started doing pullups on the bar in their doorway and Castiel just sighs and laces up his ratty Converse.

He has classes starting at eight a.m. and at least thirty minutes of weightlifting to fit in first. Balthazar, the lucky bastard, has first period free so he gets to do his cardio and then lounge around for an hour and a half.

Castiel loops his lanyard around his neck and grabs his water bottle, heading for the door.

“Have fun, gymrat!” Balthazar calls just before Castiel closes the door before him and he just rolls his eyes.

He’s got a full day of high school classes and then ballet class in the evening. He sighs and rolls out the lingering stiffness in his shoulders. He heads for the cafeteria, knowing he’ll need the caffeine to keep his energy up and a snack to eat on his way. It’s always a long day around here.

It’s barely six fifteen a.m. and the hallways are already starting to fill up with people as he makes his way past endless dorm rooms.

Dancers always dress like tortured souls trapped in 1980’s exercise video hell, or as Balthazar calls it, “boho chic”. There’s plenty of bandanas used as sweat bands, legwarmers, oversized sweaters, and random logo tees to blind anyone this early in the morning and Castiel weaves through the gathering groups as quickly as possible, knowing his mood will improve when it doesn’t feel like there’s sand rubbing the back of his eyelids.

His thoughts wander to the new combination he’s working on in class. It’s the Bluebird variation from Sleeping Beauty: famously difficult and seen as one of the few parts for a male dancer to truly flaunt his prowess and skills. He’s not a soloist, not even close, but he knows that Hester believes in him.

Castiel shakes his head in faint admiration. Hester seems mousy and unassuming at first glance with her black yoga pants and gray tees until she whips out her pointer and starts correcting everything from the arch of his foot to his specific sightline during a combination. She’s a hardass (a retired principal with NYCB, of course) but he knows she’s one of the best teachers the school has and his dancing has improved in (literal) leaps and bounds since he started her classes.

He lets himself into the weight room, finding a quiet corner over by the dumbbells and starts off with fifteen minutes of cardio on the treadmill, gritting his teeth and reminding himself that ballet is supposed to _look_ effortless. 

After that, it’s back and arms today so he does sets for his biceps, lats, triceps as he switches between weights and traditional pushups or dips on a sturdy bench. 

His headphones keep cutting out because he desperately needs a new phone but some music is better than dead silence. His playlist is an eclectic mix of classical pieces that he memorizes for variations, riot grrl and heavy metal music for motivation, and the occasional pop song because Taylor Swift is a talented musician and she deserves to be respected outside of her traditional niche as an artist who caters to tween girls and he’s willing to fight about it with anyone who asks.

After thirty minutes, he checks his watch and finds that it’s six forty-five; it’s time to wrap up. He stretches out all of his sore muscles, chugs his water bottle like a man in the desert, and hits the shower.

In the shower, he takes a little longer than normal soaping up, enjoying the hot water on his tired body. The caffeine helped but it’s still difficult to feel like a functioning human being when you have three hours of dance every day and essays to write every week.

Again, against his will, he finds himself thinking of Balthazar and watching the muscles of his back flex as he does pushups on their bedroom floor. Balthazar is snarky and irreverent; he’s consistently toeing the line of expulsion but he’s such a brilliant dancer that he always manages to worm his way back into the instructors’ good graces.

Being into men was never part of the plan. He’s never dared breach the subject with Zachariah and Naomi for obvious reasons. He’s sure they’d throw him out faster than he could say “But I’m a virgin,” and then he’d be left with no place to stay during summer break and not even the crumbs of their financial support.

He’s not ashamed, really. Most boys his age fought when they got called gay just because they were a dancer. They threw punches and denied vehemently and showed their bullies just what kind of muscles ballet gave a man.

Even though Castiel got dragged to church every single week and recited prayers every night in front of Naomi until he was ten, it never truly stuck. 

Ballet has always been his god and sometimes he reflected on the parallels with wry irony. He’s willing to break apart his body, spend all his money and time, study with hungry intensity, and practice for hours every day all in pursuit of his devotion when his parents tend to use their religion as a weapon to harm others when it’s convenient and ignore it when they’re personally inconvenienced by it.

Ballet never cared who he wanted to kiss as long as he could lift a woman over his head and whip out triple pirouettes and he liked that just fine.

He jumps, abruptly yanked out of his musings, by the now-icy water hitting his bare skin. Castiel snaps off the shower, shivering slightly and grabs his towel, drying off as quickly as possible in the chilly locker room.

Time for breakfast. In the cafeteria, there’s already a long line of dancers lining up to choose from a few healthy options like veggie egg scramble or oatmeal; Castiel opts for the green protein smoothie since he can barely taste the kale. It’s easy to gulp down on the run and he’s gotta leg it the few blocks to his school.

Not everyone attends a brick-and-mortar school. Some dancers choose online classes so they have more time to practice and Castiel wishes desperately that were him but online classes often require tuition and he can’t afford that. Online classes also turn his brain to mush since he can’t focus for shit unless he’s in a classroom so he knows he’d end up shelling out thousands just for his grades to tank instantly.

He swings by his dorm to find Balthazar sitting in the splits as he plays Smash Bros on his Nintendo Switch. Castiel just sighs as he grabs his coat and backpack. “You’re going to overstretch your tendons.”

“Maybe I heard your footsteps in the hall and was just doing it to impress you,” Balthazar says as he smoothly transitions to sitting cross legged on the ground, eyes never leaving his device.

Castiel tucks his lanyard with his key card and ID into the pocket of his jeans. “It’s really not fair that you get to practice more and then still expect me to want to battle you on Smash.”

“You’re a competitor, Cassie.” Balthazar looks up at him and winks. “You can’t stand not being the best.”

Castiel checks his phone and swears. He’s _got_ to leave now or he’ll miss his train. “Whatever. I’ll see you at class tonight.”

He attends the public high school, the Professional Performing Arts School. It’s only two subway stops away from the School of American Ballet at the Lincoln Center but that feels awfully far on a frigid November morning when he can see his breath fogging in a cloud around him.

He signs himself out at the front desk for school and then he’s off, striding through the crowds of people on the New York City streets on their way to work. The early morning sunlight is thin and crisp, illuminating the gray sidewalks and leafless trees. Castiel pulls his scarf tighter around his throat and shoves his cold fingers into his coat pockets, wishing he could stop losing his gloves all the time.

The subway is fortunately warmer and he keeps his eyes on the ground as he dodges strangers. Standing on the grimy station platform, he pulls out his phone and cheap headphones. Hester has chided him again and again to pay more attention to his music and counts, and while it’s true SAB requires music theory classes for dancers, he’s always been shit at it.

Music has never come naturally to him. He enjoys listening to it, sure, but being able to pick out a melody or worse, an accompanying harmony felt like translating a foreign language on the fly. Other dancers can pick out intricate rhythms, never missing their cue or timing. He comes in too late or too early, moves at his own pace and drives the ballet master or mistress crazy. Castiel is always the one whispered about after class is over.

He’s not stupid. He knows he’s skirting a line, just like Balthazar. But Balthazar’s _good_ , so talented they’re reluctant to throw him out when he sneaks out late (again) or shows up late for class. Castiel is the one who is dancing on the ragged edge of talent. His good days just barely balance his bad ones, leaving him just barely above average.

So he queues up the Bluebird music on his phone and plays it while he sways with the rocking of the train, hands and head unconsciously marking the choreography, mouthing the counts. He _has_ to get this.

He’s so engrossed in the music and unraveling every instrument, replaying the songs over and over again, that he almost misses his stop and has to scramble off the train just before the doors close. He feels the weight of a few exasperated gazes on his back and feels his cheeks heat.

Castiel sets his music to auto-replay, adjusts his headphones, and hustles out of the subway station at 50th Street. Jogging up the steps, he blinks in the early morning sunlight making his way down the half block to 48th Street until he reaches the imposing brick five-story building. Even now, after two years of attending, it still frightens him just a little, always feeling like the imposter who managed to con his way in.

 _You can’t stand not being the best._ Balthazar’s words drift through his mind and he firmly pushes them away. Every dancer thinks like that. He’s the not only one who‘s desperate to prove himself. But he _will_ be the one who succeeds. There’s simply no other option.

Inside, the hallways are bustling with students, easily recognizable by their outfits and accessories. The drama students wear monochrome outfits, slouchy beanies, and thick eyeliner. Music kids tote around huge instruments in bulky cases and Castiel feels a spike of superiority that his only instrument is his own body.

He’s just barely on time and he hitches his worn backpack over his shoulder as a nervous tic. Pulling out his phone and scrolling mindlessly through social media dims some of his anxiety because he can avoid eye contact or pretend he doesn’t wear his insecurity like a second skin.

Finally, the bell rings and Castiel shuffles into homeroom, hyper aware of his clothes, of his hair, the way his hands hang at his sides. He shoves them into his pockets and it’s a relief to take his seat and feel just a little less on display.

He shouldn’t feel this way. He’s a dancer, for God’s sake. If all goes well, he’ll be on a stage in tights that leave _nothing_ to the imagination every single night for decades. Yet, here he is in a classroom, desperate to avoid notice and feeling like this body is only _his_ , only useful or desirable when he’s dancing.

The rest of the time, his body feels more like a vessel, a vehicle to carry him from place to place while the rest of him strains to escape, too much anxiety and fear and intensity stuffed into a sweaty sixteen year old body with limbs that can’t perform the way he desperately wants.

With the exception of his anxiety, his Algebra I class is fine and since he’s not distracted by whispering to his friends or checking his phone (an advantage of having no friends) so the math comes fairly easily to him.

After that, it’s Health and he tunes out when Ms. Garcia presents her lecture on healthy eating. If he doesn’t understand nutrition by now, he never will.

Lunch is a quiet affair. There’s a cafeteria here, of course— a small one with blank white walls and tables with attached benches that can be folded up at the end of the period. After he gets his food (cheap carbs and dry vegetables— the irony is not lost on him), he finds a safe place in the library. It’s much quieter and he doesn’t have to worry about people watching him eat or trying to talk to him.

He scrolls through ballet videos on Youtube, trying to break down the individual variations between each version of the Bluebird solo, replaying clips from the Youth America Grand Prix competition from last year and watching the dancers in his age division. They’re incredible, really, all stunning power and delicate extension, flexibility and artistry and timing and musicality. They have it all.

 _Failure,_ whispers his mind. He closes Youtube and crunches down a dry carrot stick. God, would it kill this school to offer some ranch dressing?

His ankle itches and he scratches it, struggling with his tight combat boots. What is an itch, really? What causes it? He’s heard it has something to do with pain, like a discomfort that the brain can’t really comprehend. He idly wonders about addiction, a longing, an absence that slides between itchy desperation and grief.

He sighs and crunches another carrot stick. Emotions suck and he really ought to buy himself new socks that don’t scratch.

After lunch, his classes are typically boring. They have the nerve to talk to him about the Oxford comma and its usage as if he didn’t memorize the standard punctuation marks at age eight when he was bored. Growing up with Zachariah and Naomi, he _had_ to find ways to entertain himself so he read Naomi’s dusty cookbooks or Zachariah’s law manuals even though he barely understood them. 

Sometimes it was bad enough that he cracked open the dictionary and challenged himself to memorize as many terms as he could. He gave up halfway through _A_ , overwhelmed by the sheer number, but sometimes at night, the words will rattle through his brain: _ablepsia--blindness, ablow--in a blowing state, abluent--cleanser, ablution--ritual washing, ablutomania--mania for washing oneself, abnegate--to renounce or repudiate, abodement--an omen or foretelling._

There’s a strange comfort in the lists, stacking the words together like bricks of meaning. Build a house of concepts and you’ll always have a neat wall to keep out the sadness.

He never mentioned his dancing at school, hesitant of getting abuse for it, but one day, Gabriel mentioned to a friend that he was going to Castiel’s ballet recital and the news spread quickly through their small middle school.

In class, words were whispered just low enough that he’d doubt himself and turn around to see the culprits doing nothing but sharpening their pencils, faces innocent. He’d find his lunches destroyed and strewn on the ground or his pencils snapped in half with all the pieces carefully placed back into his pencil case.

Gabriel and Anna tried to defend him but his bullies were slippery: all bright boys who never got in trouble and acted so honestly confused when presented with Castiel’s ruined belongings that the administration just let them off with a helpless shrug in Castiel’s direction.

It was just too easy to look at him, thin and gangly with a mop of messy hair and secondhand clothes that never fit right, and think _pathetic, gay, sissy, fairy, faggot._

After a while, he’d look up to the sound of a quiet slur just as often as his name and then he’d hate himself, for letting them tattoo their ignorance into his psyche. So he’d let the words drown them out. _Abluent--cleanser, ablution--ritual washing, ablutomania--mania for washing oneself, abnegate--to renounce or repudiate, abodement--an omen or foretelling._ Over and over again like beads of a rosary.

He turns up his music as loud as it’ll go on the subway ride home.

Ballet is a frustrating three hours. He still can’t fucking turn for shit and there’s a sour taste in his mouth that might be exhaustion or self-loathing. After the révérance, he’s sweaty and achy but Ezra, one of the teachers, calls everyone over for a quick meeting. Castiel flops down on the marley floor gratefully, gulping water from his waterbottle.

“Gather around, everyone. Settle down.” Ezra says, waving their hands and waiting until everyone’s quiet.

“You guys are dancers so you’ve probably all heard of the Youth America Grand Prix.”

There’s general nods and murmurs of agreement. Castiel almost chokes on a mouthful of water as terror rises in his chest and Balthazar shoots him a concerned look. 

_Of course_ he knows what YAGP. It’s the biggest ballet competition in the world; ten thousand dancers every year compete internationally with the finals held right here in New York. He swallows hard as Ezra continues.

“The New York semi-finals are in March. That means if you’d like to participate, you need to register now so you’ll be ready with a variation in March. The YAGP offers scholarships to excellent schools all around the world and of course, our feeder dancer company, New York City Ballet, will be there, looking for stand-out competitors to join them. A dancer who already attends our School of American Ballet and can distinguish themselves onstage would be in an excellent position to be offered a corps or even a soloist position with NYCB.”

Ezra starts talking about how to register and the fees and commitment involved and Castiel struggles to listen carefully, excitement and terror buzzing under his skin.

This is his chance. He could get a real position with NYCB. He’ll be 17 in March and it’s not unheard for dancers to be offered a contract that young. He could _prove_ he’s a good dancer and go pro. He’d never need to worry about losing his scholarship or being forced to go back to living with Naomi and Zachariah again if he can win.

He has to win. He _has_ to. He asks Ezra for the paperwork and they hand it to him with a smile. Castiel fills it out that night, flashlight held in his teeth as Balthazar snores lightly from the other side of the darkened room.

He’ll find a way to come up with the registration fee and the costume fees. He’ll sell his belongings or start tutoring or even beg for money on street corners if he has to. Because this is his chance. He’ll be offered a contract and then everything will be wonderful. He’ll be Castiel Novak, principal dancer at NYCB and no one will ever be able to take that away from him. He’ll be the best and the brightest.

Lying awake in his dark dorm room, the lights of the city painting dim shapes on his carpet, Castiel dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed this! This is a niche fic idea that I worried would only appeal to me and my friends and so I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts. Comments really motivate me to keep writing!


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